Particle beams are used to manipulate objects, wherein the objects are in particular miniaturized objects. For example, a particle beam can be directed onto the surface of the object in order to remove material from the object or to deposit material on the object. Such processing can be enhanced by supplying a process gas which is activated by the particle beam such that reaction products of the process gas are deposited on the surface of the object at the location of incidence of the particle beam, or that reaction products of the process gas are bound to the material of the object at the location of incidence of the particle beam, wherein resulting compounds are released from the object. The particle beam can be an electron beam or an ion beam.
It is a common task in the field of manipulating miniaturized objects to remove material from or deposit material on a predetermined surface portion of an object by scanning a particle beam across the surface portion line by line.
It has been found that the results achieved by such line scan across a surface portion of an object do not quite fulfill the expectations.